Notre Musique
I imagine the film.
It is not it is finally not
called
Notre Musique after all.
I can imagine
the film we imagined
though there’s nothing
strictly speaking
that I can imagine.
That is to say
I can imagine nothing,
but nothing more,
or nothing,
but nothing else.
Once in the library
there was a fire
and the books consumed the fire
while the authors of the books
stood idly by,
the authors in eternity
among the buried words
beneath the pavement,
the authors among the flies
on a heap of dung
in a fallow field,
the authors lost at sea
in a storm of words,
the authors shorn of memory,
the authors in rags
in a film called Notre Musique,
a silent film now
playing almost playing
at the Orpheum
or is it the Thalia,
the Clio, the Melpomine
or the Music Hall of Vagrant Souls,
a nameless film of endless length
forbidden by the designated
descendants of the prophets.
Admission free.
(pour Liliane)
Solunar Tables
Pain of the child set afire
before blindered eyes
a world’s eyes
Poem of the bird
exploding in flight
in our random skies
Pain of the ladder
its storm-shattered steps
defying ascent
Pain of the Hunger Moon
dangling over hoar frost
by a failing thread
Should we cut it
for those without bread
Pain of the word
Poem of the word
unheard unread
The darkling river
and the steadfast ferryman
who refuses your coin
The wave that embraces
while it destroys
Our secret entertainments
at the Madman’s Market
and our alphabets without end
that spell themselves
and weave themselves
into a trembling web
as the poem-road below
of silences and stones
comes to a final turn
Street Song
Mad Mary sits on a stoop
She tells
how she’s birthed the Christ
many times
sometimes in rain
sometimes in snow
sometimes amidst the flames
of war in the streets
I have traveled many leagues
beneath the sea
far so much farther
than the eye can see
and the little I sleep I sleep
balanced on a blackened bier
swaddled by the news of the day
from near and far away
I carry death in my pocket
that loving friend
and I’ll pull him out
when the song must end
What more is there to say
Michael Palmer is the author of Thread (New Directions, 2011); Company of Moths (New Directions, 2005), which was shortlisted for the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize; Codes Appearing: Poems 1979-1988 (2001); The Promises of Glass (2000); The Lion Bridge: Selected Poems 1972-1995 (1998); At Passages (1996); Sun (1988); First Figure (1984); Notes for Echo Lake (1981); Without Music (1977); The Circular Gates (1974); and Blake’s Newton (1972). He is also the author of a prose work, The Danish Notebook (Avec Books, 1999). He has translated work from French, Russian and Portuguese, editing and contributing translations to Nothing The Sun Could Not Explain: Twenty Contemporary Brazilian Poets (Sun & Moon Press, 1997), and Blue Vitriol (Avec Books, 1994), a collection of poetry by Alexei Parshchikov. He also translated Theory of Tables (1994), a book written by Emmanuel Hocquard after translating Palmer’s “Baudelaire Series” into French. He has frequently collaborated with others artists, including the painter Gerhard Richter and the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. Palmer’s awards include two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, and the Shelley Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of America. From 1999 to 2004, he served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. He lives in San Francisco.
